Wednesday, November 30, 2016

UK: Darts legend Eric Bristow has caused uproar after a series of insensitive tweets about the ongoing football sex abuse scandal

The MBE, known as The Crafty Cockney, went on the rampage saying that if he had been abused by ex-youth football coach Barry Bennell he would have 'sorted that poof out'.

The series of posts drew fierce criticism, including from Steve Walters, one of the former footballers to have spoken out about his abuse at the hands of the convicted paedophile and former Crewe coach.

So far more than 20 former footballers have come forward alleging they were victims of child abuse as junior players.

In a series of tweets tonight, Bristow, who appeared in I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in 2012, said: 'Might be a looney but if some football coach was touching me when i was a kid as i (sic) got older i would have went back and sorted that poof out.

'U got to sought him out when u get older or dont look in the mirror glad i am a dart player proper men.

'Trouble is nowadays u cant tell the truth what do u feel out there tweet me.

'Everybody that works on tv is frightened to say the truth because they are frightened to lose their job, life shouldnt be like that.'

Leading up to the US presidential election, there were news reports about white supremacists supporting a candidate. Yes, in 2008, white supremacist David Duke said Barack Obama as president would be "a visual aid" and "indisputable proof" that whites had lost control of the U.S.

I was then a regular commentator on National Public Radio's "News and Notes," the man-bites-dog topic of our Roundtable discussion on August 13, 2008: "White Supremacists Voting For Obama?"

Fast-forward eight years, Donald Trump is replacing Obama in the White House and as the poster boy for racists angling to make themselves newsworthy.

White hate groups have lost relevance, but they know how to market themselves to media focused on conflict and crazies. Reflecting eight years later: Did white supremacists recruit well during the Obama years? Should voters have been concerned about their endorsement? Although Americans tell pollsters that the country is headed in the wrong direction, Obama, the most visual aid of hate groups, remains popular in polls and easily won re-election in 2012.

It is now an American ritual to charge presidential candidates as being racist. In 2012, Democrat vice-president Joe Biden said Republican nominee Mitt Romney wanted to put black people "back in chains."

In 2008, the Republican ticket of McCain/Palin was accused of "racist fear-mongering."

In 2000, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) ran an ad tying Republican candidate George W. Bush to the dragging death of a black man in Texas.

In 1996, Republican candidate Bob Dole was accused of providing "aid and comfort" to racists with his tough talk.

During the 1980s, Republican Ronald Reagan was allegedly turning back the clock to slavery and his successor George H. W. Bush was a kinder, gentler bigot using racist code language.

Even Democrat Bill Clinton briefly had some explaining to do, for not opposing use of the Confederate flag as governor of Arkansas and because of his close relationship to segregationist J. William Fulbright (yes, the Fulbright Program bears his name).

It will upset those grieving over the 2016 election, but I do not believe Donald Trump is a racist. Insensitive, combative, arrogant, yes, but being politically uncouth does not mean racist.

Trump's critics point to a 1970's discrimination suit filed against Trump's company, his campaign against young black men (falsely) accused of rape in Central Park, and numerous incendiary comments.

Trump struck the nest of angry bees ready to attack. He will need to feed the swarm some honey by instructing the Justice Department to investigate hate groups.

Critics who see racism spelled in their morning cereal are likely to see racism even in sensible things Trump does. Trump has nominated a school choice advocate as his secretary of education. I briefly met Betsy Devos years ago, she is an education reformer who is for change, and she will not change the subject. The Black Alliance for Educational Options immediately hailed her nomination.

George Mason University economist Walter Williams has said, "If the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan wanted to sabotage black academic excellence, he could not devise a more effective way of doing so than the schools serving black children."

Black high school graduates read and do math at the level of white and Asian middle school children, have much higher dropout rates, and attend dangerous public schools. You may disagree with charters and vouchers, but is increasing educational choices for children in bad situations the work of an undercover white supremacist?

I predicted Trump would defeat Clinton, I believe he will be an adequate president, and hope he will come to his senses with some of his proposed policies. His harsh campaign language may have been his bargaining tactic with international leaders. As a businessman who has negotiated incredible deals over the past four decades, is he really for cutting off trade and possible deals?

Ah, the point is not to reason with or about Trump. The rioters and strategists trying to block Trump's inauguration will find out in four to eight years that he did not destroy the U.S. or the world.

By then, they will be accusing another candidate of being racist and quoting white supremacists trying to make themselves look relevant.

Husk had posted several memes on his Facebook page, including one showing Obama and Melania Trump. “Fluent in Slovenian, English, French, Serbian, and German,” it said over Trump’s photo. Over Obama’s, it read: “Fluent in Ghetto.”

Bryant, the city manager, said statements that are “deemed to be biased or racially insensitive or derogatory” can affect the community’s trust in the police department and, when that happens, “we have to take action to correct it.”

“As public employees, and especially law enforcement officers, we have a standard of excellence to uphold,” Bryant told The Washington Post.

Tatyana Navka and her partner Andrew Burkovsjy take each other's hands and start their routine - which features a mime of people being shot - wearing the same striped pyjamas as death camp prisoners, complete with the Star Of David emblazoned on to show that they are Jewish.

The pair were competing on the Russian television programme Ice Age.

Ms Navka, who won Winter Olympic gold in 2006 and is also a two-time world champion, is married to Dmitry Peskov, Putin's chief spin doctor.

For much of the hit, the pair have beaming grins on their face that are typical of ice skating, and do spins and twirls that appear to have little in connection with their gruesome theme.

The Saturday night peak time Nazi-themed item was said to be based on the Italian movie Life is Beautiful, a 1997 tragicomedy about an Italian-Jewish man's fight to survive in a Nazi concentration camp.

Navka posted images of the performance on her Instagram account and wrote that she hoped to pay remembrance to the Holocaust so future generations would never have to experience anything so terrible.

Monday, November 28, 2016

"Cultural appropriation" in Canada

A group of students at Queen’s University is the target of vitriolic attacks for attending an off-campus costume party at which the theme was “Countries of the World.” Among other things, the mostly white participants dressed up as Buddhist monks, Middle Eastern sheiks, Viet Cong fighters and Rastafarians.

Toronto comedian Celeste Yim came across pictures from the event and was immediately incensed, branding the behaviour of the students “shockingly racist” “offensive” and “tasteless.” Things went crazy from there. Predictably, the Queen’s administration quickly condemned the party, and said it was investigating.

To which I ask: Investigating what?

When did going to a costume party become a racist activity? I’ve attended many in my life, certainly lots in my twenties, where people of varied ethnic backgrounds (and sometimes not) dressed up in all sorts of crazy ways, depicting people of all racial makeups. A friend who is black once donned Lederhosen for an Oktoberfest bash. Today that would be cultural theft, I suppose.

Should I have felt wronged when a neighbour of Chinese descent showed up for a Halloween party dressed as a “Canadian hoser,” replete with red plaid over-shirt, tuque, and a couple of missing front teeth? I doubt there was a soul in the house thinking, “Way to perpetuate a negative stereotype.”

I understand that lines can be crossed; jokes, sometimes in the form of costumes, fall flat or are just plain offensive. At the same time, I think we need to be extremely careful about making a distinct connection between what we witnessed at Queen’s and overt racism.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Criminals must not be called offenders any more, says Scottish Government

How about "ex-cons"?

Criminals released from prison will no longer be called “offenders” in the Scottish criminal justice system under controversial plans to make them feel more welcome in communities.

SNP ministers have called on organisations working with ex-prisoners and people who have completed community sentences to use the terms “person with convictions” or “person with an offending history” instead.

In a new strategy designed to reduce Scotland’s high prison population and drive down reoffending rates, the Scottish government insisted that renaming “offenders” would support reintegration and reduce stigma.

It has ordered partner organisations working in criminal justice to “be aware of the power of language” and use “inclusive” terms for people after they have paid their debt to society.

Anna Gilford (aka Honey G) caused a mini media storm when she hit the stage at this year’s X Factor auditions, performing Missy Elliott’s ‘Work It’. The white, middle-class 35-year-old from the north-west London suburbs appeared sporting a shiny tracksuit-top, mirror shades and a baseball cap.

Before you could say Straight Outta Harrow, the liberal commentariat was accusing her of ‘mocking black culture’, and labelling her ‘racist’. The singer Lily Allen said Honey G was ‘offensive’, and rapper Professor Green claimed Gilford’s character was ‘an injustice’. The Guardian went into overdrive, describing Honey G as a ‘disturbing cultural phenomena’.

According to Lola Okolosie, Honey G is a ‘modern-day blackface’ that highlights ‘how race really operates in post-Brexit UK’.But these self-righteous critics aren’t standing up to racism – they’re trivialising it, and turning culture into something sacred and static in the process.

I spent most of my teen years listening to ska and reggae bands like The Specials, The Beat and UB40. I appreciated that these bands were from the Midlands, not Jamaica. But I was struck by their ability to embrace the music of the Caribbean, despite not hailing from that part of the world. Their music was ‘cultural appropriation’, but it was also British cultural diversity at its best.

If those bands appeared now they’d no doubt be attacked for their Eurocentric imitation of black music. As Frank Furedi has noted on spiked, cultural borrowing is viewed today by ‘cultural crusaders’ not as a universal form of human co-operation and appreciation, something to be encouraged, but as a form of cultural theft that must be reined in or censored. For these crusaders, culture is owned solely by the people it originated with. This idea undermines universal values, our common humanity.

If so-called cultural appropriation is painted as so problematic, solidarity and understanding between people of different backgrounds and cultures becomes all but impossible.

Friday, November 25, 2016

"Why can’t I talk about the facts?" asks an Australian government minister

IMMIGRATION minister Peter Dutton won’t step back from his comments regarding a small portion of the Lebanese Muslim community.

Australians were “sick” of over the top political correctness, the Minister told media after a Greens Senator said his comments might be factual but they weren’t “productive”.

Mr Dutton rejected suggestions his comments were whipping up racism. Instead, he blamed the “tricky elite”, Opposition leader Bill Shorten and Greens MPs for making the remarks a big deal to win political points.

“I want to have an honest discussion,” he said. “The vast majority of Lebanese Australians are law-abiding, hard working, good decent people who are besmirched by the small element within the community who are doing the wrong thing. “I made that clear.”

Earlier, Greens Senator Nick McKim had attacked Mr Dutton for telling politicians in Question Time on Monday 22 out of the last 33 people charged with terrorist-related offences in Australia were from a second and third generational Lebanese-Muslim background.

“Undoubtedly the advice he’s got is accurate but just because something is fact doesn’t mean that it’s reasonable or productive to talk about it,” Senator McKim said on Sky News.

“What we’ve got is a deliberate attack from Mr Dutton by quoting these numbers on a particular subsection of the Australian community.”

Mr Dutton had been clarifying this comment to a Sky News interview last week: “The reality is Malcolm Fraser did make mistakes in bringing some people in the 1970s and we’re seeing that today.”

On Thursday, Mr Dutton questioned why he couldn’t talk about facts. “Mr McKim gave the game away today when he said ‘What Dutton has said is factual and reasonable but shouldn’t be spoken about’,” he said. “Australians are sick of that. “They want to have an honest discussion.”

Thursday, November 24, 2016

President-elect Donald Trump has picked Sessions for the job of attorney general so the following unsubstantiated allegations have been re-animated by the media

The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony during hearings in March and May 1986, that Sessions had made racist remarks and called the NAACP and ACLU "un-American."

Thomas Figures, a black assistant US attorney who worked for Sessions, testified that Sessions called him "boy" on multiple occasions and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying that he thought Klan members were "OK, until he learned that they smoked marijuana."

On why he never spoke up against Sessions' alleged use of the term, Figures testified: "I felt that if I had said anything or reacted in a manner in which I thought appropriate, I thought I would be fired."

Sessions angrily denied the allegations at the time. His office did not respond to a recent request for comment.

An episode of Coronation Street which sparked hundreds of complaints over claims of racism did not breach the broadcasting code, the TV watchdog has ruled.

Ofcom investigated an episode broadcast on ITV in August in which a character described her hair as having 'more roots than Kunta Kinte'.

The remark refers to Roots, the novel by American author Alex Haley, which features an 18th century African slave of that name. A 1977 TV miniseries based on the book was a global sensation.

The comment sparked an online backlash, with outraged viewers branding it 'racist' and 'culturally insensitive'. Ofcom also received 472 complaints about the episode.

The 'Kunta Kinte' remark was made as the character Eva Price, played by Catherine Tyldesley, 32, paid a visit to a hair salon. Looking in the mirror at her dyed hair, she said: 'I have more roots than Kunta Kinte. No idea who that is, by the way, just something my mum used to say.'

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

"Hamilton" as cultural appropriation

"Hamilton" is a frenetic Broadway musical play that attempts to rewrite history. There is a discussion of it here. It aroused controversy when one of its actors used it to spout common Leftist complaints to the Vice President elect when he was in the audience for a performance. He was not allowed to peacefully enjoy the show

The story is set in the early days of American independence. Leftists love it, mainly, as far as I can gather, because it has black actors playing white historical figures.

But isn't that cultural appropriation? If it is angrily abused cultural appropriation when whites act like various minorities, why is it not cultural appropriation when blacks play whites? That nobody in fact objects is just the usual Leftist hypocrisy as far as I can see. Leftists have no lasting principles, just poses that suit the moment.

I particularly dislike "modern" versions of traditional plays and operas. I like the actors to appear in the costumes of the period and before backdrops that represent scenes of the period. So I wouldn't go to see "Hamilton" if you paid me.

And I guess that there might be a lot of that reaction among conservatives generally. I think it comes down to conservatives being at ease with reality while Leftists either want to deny, denounce or distort it. So that may be part of the reason why Trump and some other conservatives were irritable about the show.

Another reason is that American conservatives and, to a degree, Americans generally, tend to be respectful of their founding fathers. So to represent them by black men prancing around in hip-hop singing and dancing routines appears disrespectful and jarring -- and was probably meant to be disrespectful and jarring. So Trump and many others would have been primed to dislike anything to do with the show, hence the complaints about it.

Cameron is a former Scottish unionist, and there are no more bitter haters than they

The Left of the Labor Party claim they have the moral authority on most issues, but particularly women’s issues, including sexism, women’s rights and equal opportunity in the workplace.

Think of Labor’s feminist warriors, including Deputy Labor Leader Tanya Plibersek and senior frontbencher Penny Wong. Some women look up to these politicians to call out wrongs perpetrated against women.

Neither are shrinking violets and both of them are from the Left.

But where was the outrage last night - and indeed today - about what their fellow Left factional warrior Doug Cameron said to Employment Minister Michaelia Cash while the Senate was debating the Registered Organisation Commission Bill.

“Senator Cormann, I know you have to be there to hold the Minister’s hand,” Senator Cameron said.

“So maybe just hold the Minister’s hand and stop interjecting, would be a good start. That would be a good start.”

“The Minister can’t handle the Bill on her own … She needs Senator Cormann there to chaperone her through this Bill. I’ve never see this before with a senior minister in the Government.”

Basically, Senator Cameron accused Senator Cash of needing a man beside her to do a job properly.

Can you imagine the outrage if Immigration Minister Peter Dutton or Treasurer Scott Morrison said this? The feminazis would be lining up to attack such a ridiculous comment.

But where are they today? No where.

I know politics is robust and requires a thick skin but if we want women to be treated fairly and with respect than this rubbish needs to be called out. Senator Cameron, you should be ashamed of yourself.

But more than that, the shame sits more heavily on the women in the Chamber who said nothing while he spewed his ridiculous comments.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

A Democrat congressman told the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday that the next president of the United States is a bigot, a demagogue, a liar, a sexual predator and a con artist.

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said in a floor speech at the end of the day’s proceedings that President-elect Donald Trump could not be treated like any other politician or like any other Republican.

“Because he is not. Trump represents something much more dangerous,” he said. “While none of us want to be in this case, we have a duty to treat him like the threat that he is – a threat to our values, a threat to our people, and a threat to our national identity.”

Gallego noted that Trump is 70 years old, and he said it was unrealistic to expect him to change.

Gallego then called Trump, in turn, a “sexual predator,” “a demagogue,” “a bigot,” “a liar” and a “con artist.”

In each case the epithet was accompanied by a brief reference to incidents that arose during the campaign – including claims of sexual assault about Trump, Speaker Paul Ryan’s criticism of his remarks about a Mexican-American judge, and Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz’ criticisms of Trump’s character during the GOP primary .

Gallego said Trump would not be an ordinary president. “Rather than helping him protect the country, we must protect the country from the new president.”

After further criticism of Trump’s actions, policies, business activities, and transition-related controversies, Gallego concluded by saying many shared the “fervent hope” that the president-elect does not govern the same way as he has campaigned.

“Here in Congress, however, we cannot afford to give him that benefit of the doubt. We must not lift a finger to help him scam our country,” he said. “We must instead put every effort into stopping him.”

Gallego, a former member of the Arizona House of Representatives, was elected to the U.S. Congress in 2014. He is a former U.S. Marine and Iraq War veteran, and serves on the House Armed Services Committee.

A TEXAS television reporter is out of a job after she criticised President Obama and praised President-elect Donald Trump on her personal Facebook page — claiming the country went “downhill” under the outgoing commander-in-chief.

Scarlett Fakhar said she was recently canned from her local news gig at Fox in Houston for posting last week that she was “happy and relieved” over Trump’s unexpected White House win.

Fakhar had said in the post, which has since been deleted, that Obama made the “entire county hate one another” and claimed God “had a hand” in the election. She also said she could “barely sleep from how happy and relieved she was” after Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.

“Fox 26 Houston fired me today for expressing my conservative views on my private Facebook page,” Fakhar posted Thursday. “That is all I will say for you. But I want you to know how much your support has gotten me through this. God bless you all.”

A spokesman for KRIV confirmed to The Post that Fakhar, 25, was no longer with the station, but declined further comment.

Monday, November 21, 2016

Leftist censorship never stops

Fake news became a major problem during the tail end of the election, leading Google and Facebook to ban fake news sites from using their ad platforms. However, because we all know someone who’s fallen for a fake news story, Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication at Merrimack College in Massachusetts, put together a list of “False, misleading, clickbait-y and satirical ‘news’ sources” to help the plebeian public sort out real from fake.

There’s just one problem: Zimdars includes legitimate conservative news outlets on her list. Kira Davis writes at RedState (one of the outlets dubbed “fake” by Zimdars):

Zimdars includes conservative media giants IJReview, The Blaze, and Redstate – all organizations that provide aggregate reporting and opinion pieces. Having worked for all three organizations at one point or another, I can say with full certainty that not one is a ‘fake news’ site – or even misleading.

In fact, RedState writers go to great lengths to debunk false stories they find in the media. RedState has produced some of the top conservative talents, including former Editor-in-Chief Erick Erickson, and regularly features articles submitted by members of the House and Senate and from presidential candidates.

The RedState Gathering is covered by major media, and has top caliber speakers and was even the site of the announcement of a Presidential campaign (Rick Perry.) RedState content is regularly featured in the mainstream press and has been quoted frequently by even such old-school journalism outlets as The New York Times many times this year alone.

IJReview is based in Washington D.C. and has a very strong and lucrative relationship with Facebook, even teaming up with the social media behemoth to produce one of the primary debates. Their reputation on Capitol Hill is well-known, and politicians and high-profile media personalities regularly contribute guest posts.

The Blaze provides a lot of opinion pieces some people like Zimdars might disagree with, but they most certainly do not post ‘fake news’ or even misleading headlines. MSNBC regularly produces sensational headlines that aren’t backed up by the research but funny enough; they are nowhere on this list. No mainstream liberal reporting agency is on this list.

If these are the types of sites Google and Facebook intend to block as “fake news,” then I’d rather just deal with the obviously fake and click-bait headlines on my newsfeed. But as this election has reinforced, liberals cannot deal with it when they don’t get their way.

The rant below is remarkable. It says nothing at great length. There is no information of substance conveyed. It is presumably meant to be funny for a Leftist audience. It appeared in a Left-leaning major Australian newspaper. But underneath the slight veneer of humour, it is pure hate. The hate just poured out of the writer -- and kept pouring. I reproduce the whole thing so people can witness how much hate there is there. She no doubt feels pleased with herself for writing it but she clearly has "issues", as they say these days. I suspect that underneath an acceptable social facade, she is a generally hostile person -- JR

Jacqueline Maley

Of all the lunacies of the post-fact world, my favourite is the fiction being peddled that "left-wing elites" in the media and elsewhere revealed their horrendous bias by expressing dismay at the prospect of a Trump presidency.

Voicing some discomfort at the prospect of a pussy-grabbing protector-isolationalist becoming leader of the free world does not a left-wing loon make.

Any political candidate who has been endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan is leaving a lot of room out there on their left flank. You don't have to be Che Guevara to have inadvertently found yourself sitting in that space, desolate in the knowledge that the best you can do to stop the juggernaut is to un-follow The Donald on Twitter.

But progressive and free-thinking Trump first-responders (and since last week, we are all, from Senegal to Seattle, Trump first-responders) do have a problem with Melania Trump, first lady-elect, the woman ostensibly closest to the man but at the same time strangely incidental to him.

Melania – Slovenian immigrant, mother, and "perfect 10", to use the technical, Trumpian term – is either her husband's greatest victim or his worst enabler.

She is definitely an important source of what the white-coat doctors call "narcissistic supply", but she may also be that woman with a desperate look in her eyes madly trying to blink her way into communicating that she needs to escape this nightmare way more than we do.

Feminists are at a loss as to how to deal with Melania because it's generally uncool to mock blameless wives and mothers, and yet, this is a woman whose entire life appears predicated on the fact that she is hot. Which is not what Mary Wollstonecraft et al fought in the trenches for.

How do we solve a problem like Melania?

Images of Trump frankly spying on his wife as she cast her vote on November 8 were telling. Did he expect her to vote Democrat? Since winning the vote, otherwise disempowered women have used the privacy of the ballot box as a way to rebel secretly against their husbands, but poor Melania was not afforded this inalienable right.

Perhaps she wanted to put a nice big tick in the Hillary box but was forced to divert at the last minute when she felt her husband's reptilian eyes boring into her back.

Funnily enough, the next day the entire world woke up with that same feeling.

Feminists are at a loss as to how to deal with first lady Melania Trump. The little we do know about Melania has been communicated by mostly her husband. He began lobbying for her back in 2000 when she was his new girlfriend and he pestered the then editor of GQ, Dylan Jones, to feature her nude in his magazine.

More recently, Melania was the subject of a GQ profile that revealed she had a secret half-brother in Slovenia but told us precisely nothing about the kind of person she is. She spoke in cliches and revealed nothing of herself except for the fact that she sticks to her "role" and would never ask her husband to change a nappy or put their son to bed.

Trump says Melania will make an "unbelievable first lady".

The very title of "first lady" is bold confirmation of what many workplaces, and (dare I say it), society as a whole, have been slow to acknowledge – that men holding down serious jobs can do them properly only if they have a woman behind the scenes sponging up the detritus of daily life.

In the case of an average account manager, or a business owner, that means your wife pays the internet bill and makes sure the children's hair is sufficiently crazy for the school's annual "Crazy Hair Day" (or as it's known to one of my circle, "F---ing Crazy Hair Day").

Presidential wives probably have staff to take care of Crazy Hair Day, but they would have many other irritating and time-consuming help-meet tasks, like scheduling the secret service detail around school assembly, and arranging state dinner seating plans to minimise awkwardness between guests experiencing diplomatic conflict.

In Melania's case, seating arrangements will be further complicated by the fact that her husband is on record as being very gropey. Angela Merkel or Teresa May will want to watch their legs sub-table, particularly given Trump would probably deny any groping not on the facts, but on the justification that neither leader is a "10" so why would he bother?

First ladies are permitted, of course, to take up a few of their own causes, and Melania has said she will focus on the scourge of online bullying, prompting many to wonder aloud whether she had glanced at her own husband's Twitter account recently.

In the post-truth world it would not be surprising if Melania decides next week to take up the banner for victims of sexual assault, or become patron of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

People will call her a hypocrite but perhaps, underneath the Barbie-doll bust and the mask-like features, she is trolling her husband in open cover.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

Twitter has initiated a major purge of prominent accounts associated with the alt-right exactly a week after GOP President-elect Donald Trump’s stunning electoral victory.

One of the first and most prominent accounts caught up in the deletion is Richard Spencer, president and director of the National Policy Institute, an alt-right think tank focused on white identity and related policy issues.

“This is corporate Stalinism,” Richard Spencer told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Twitter is trying to airbrush the Alt Right out of existence. They’re clearly afraid. They will fail!”

Not only did Twitter kill Spencer’s personal account, but Twitter also suspended the National Policy Institute’s official account (@npiamerica) and its online magazine (@RadixJournal), in addition to a separate book publishing company run by Spencer called Washington Summit Publishers (@washsummit).

The ban took place the same day Spencer appeared on NPR and The Daily Show.

Numerous Twitter users expressed shock at the suspension, while others tried to come up with explanations for the purge.

Paul Town, one of the alt-right trolls responsible for feeding Olivia Nuzzi at The Daily Beast a false and outlandish narrative on how Pepe the cartoon frog came to be associated with white nationalism, was also suspended.

Other suspended users, among many, include Pax Dickinson, Ricky Vaughn and John Rivers — all notable alt-right accounts.

The move by Twitter threatens to diminish the explosive power of the alt-right, which has made use of Twitter to brutally troll journalists and political pundits, in addition to supporting Trump and spreading its political philosophy in front of millions of people.

While Twitter has in the past slowly cracked down on accounts near the alt-right, such as those of WeSearchr CEO Chuck Johnson and journalist Milo Yiannopoulos, the major purge Tuesday evening of prominent alt-right accounts is so far unprecedented.

In response to the purges, many alt-right users are heading over to Gab, a Twitter substitute platform with a much more aggressive free speech policy.

A Leftist female with an Arabic first name abuses an anti-immmigration Senator and is enraged when he responds with great brevity. He sent no abuse back but that was not good enough, apparently. The sense of entitlement on the Left is gargantuan

Australia is considering a law to make sure that illegal immigrants can never be given citizenship. One for Trump to consider?

This afternoon she sent the Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Senator an email “imploring him to block the lifetime ban on refugees bill”, and within three minutes she had a response.

Just two words:

“Go away.”

"I was so shocked", the 25-year-old told Mamamia after receiving the reply.

"I couldn’t believe a grown man and public servant, who is being paid with my tax dollar to represent my best interests in parliament, would have the audacity to treat a citizen with such disregard and so childishly. A man who has been elected by the people, telling the people to 'go away' is the exact opposite of democracy."

"Seeking asylum is a basic human right, and this proposed bill is a deliberately cruel and unusual measure added to already cruel and obscene policies enforced by the Australian government," she said.

It should be noted that Nour's email to the Senator contained some strong words. She wrote, "I understand that you are a One Nation Party senator, which obviously means you are a racist, close minded, outdated neanderthal but I’m hoping that somewhere in your hateful, horrible heart there is a tiny smidgen of goodness that is willing to do the right thing and BLOCK the Life Time Ban On Refugees Bill – as is your duty."

Friday, November 18, 2016

More censorship coming from Google and Facebook

The war on "fake news" seems to be aimed explicitly at stories favouring Trump. A war on ALL fake news would be welcome but with Leftists in charge of the censoring, the result will be even more one-sided news coverage than we have already had. See the story below this one for some examples of fake news from the Left

President-elect Donald Trump is already reshaping the Internet. A great cleanup has begun, a weeding-out of the fake news stories and hateful commentary that surfaced so often during the presidential campaign, usually on social media sites.

This reckoning — undertaken by internet giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter over the past few days — might make the online environment tidier and more trustworthy, but also, perhaps, a little less free.

They are taking aim at fake pro-Trump stories like one reporting a phony endorsement of Trump by Pope Francis that attracted millions of readers, or the one about Hillary Clinton’s nonexistent $200 million mansion in the Maldives.

Meanwhile, the surging white nationalist “alt-right” movement has used Twitter as one of its favorite communications channels.

Acting now, after the election, is a transparently political move by companies that could have cracked down on this stuff years ago. Instead, Facebook and Google earned big audiences and big dollars by selling ads on phony news sites that spread outrageous falsehoods. And Twitter barely flinched while some of its users terrorized others with abusive and threatening messages.

Last week, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg initially dismissed criticism that fake news on his site influenced the election.

That assertion has reportedly been challenged by some of his own employees, who are said to be forming an unofficial task force to examine how the powerful company could better police spurious information.

Then on Monday Facebook joined Google in announcing that sites that routinely publish false stories will be barred from joining their advertising networks. One could easily conclude the crackdown is coming now because the center-left leadership of these companies suspects that the anything-goes policy helped elect Trump.

Fake reports of “hate crimes” committed by fans of President-elect Donald Trump are sweeping the nation. Meanwhile, real crimes continue to be committed by anti-Trump rioters in dozens of cities across America.

One fake “hate crime” involved a Muslim woman at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who claimed that she had her hijab torn off by two white males. Lafayette police now report that she “admitted that she fabricated the story.”

Other incidents are being reported as “crimes” that are not crimes at all. CNN published a list of “hate crimes” on Saturday that includes an incident where a group of middle school students chanted “Build the wall!” in a cafeteria. That is not a “crime”; it is juvenile behavior by boorish 12- and 13-year-olds.

Another “crime” on CNN’s list comes from a university where “somebody chalked the words ‘Trump,’ ‘Build wall’ and ‘[Expletive deleted] your safe space’ in front of the library. That’s right: they used actual chalk.

Other than that, there’s not much. Elizabeth Nolan Brown of Reason.com has posted a more extensive list of cases where police were unable to verify the allegations being made, including an alleged attack on a gay man in Santa Monica, California.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) documented three men showing up at a Veterans Day parade with Confederate flags. Provocative? Deliberately. Offensive? Yes, to most. Hate crime? No.

And yet Huffman blamed Donald Trump: “We need to prepare for more of this because the Trump campaign has legitimized and given public space to some shadowy groups that used to hide from public view.”

(For the record, Trump supported efforts to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state capitol.)

Meanwhile, thousands of people flood city centers in Los Angeles, Portland, New York and elsewhere, in some cases setting fires, smashing windows and vandalizing anything they can.

Night after night, the protests have continued, organized by radical left-wing organizations such as MoveOn.org and ANSWER, in rejection of the results of a democratic election.

And some of the rhetoric of the protests has been bigoted, and violent. One sign at a Los Angeles protest Saturday read: “This Machine Kills Fascists.”

Some of the protests have resulted in violent attacks on police, and dozens of arrests.

And there have been real hate crimes against Trump supporters, including a videotaped beating of a white man who was targeted because he was accused of voting for Trump.

The wave of anti-Trump crimes — “hate crimes” and otherwise — committed by anti-Trump thugs overwhelms, by several orders of magnitude, whatever crimes are being attributed to Trump supporters.

The narrative about a wave of “hate crimes” inspired by Trump is a deliberate fabrication, meant to tarnish the President-elect. It is a continuation of false accusations, during the campaign, that Trump represented the second coming of Hitler.

It is an attempt to organize a new opposition, based on lies, and the deliberate sowing of mistrust at a time when Americans have been called — by both presidential candidates — to come together.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Leftists are always seeing in others the hate and racism that boils inside themselves

Nevada Senator Harry Reid released the following statement about the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States:

“I have personally been on the ballot in Nevada for 26 elections and I have never seen anything like the reaction to the election completed last Tuesday. The election of Donald Trump has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America.

“If this is going to be a time of healing, we must first put the responsibility for healing where it belongs: at the feet of Donald Trump, a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate. Winning the electoral college does not absolve Trump of the grave sins he committed against millions of Americans.

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Must not find Mrs Obama unattractive

The ancient Romans had a saying: "De gustibus non disputandum est" -- translatable as "Concerning taste there can be no dispute". That tolerance apparently does not apply when commenting on Mrs Obama's looks. The negative judgment of two women below about Mrs Obama's looks has been vigorously disputed

But, like it or not, the de facto worldwide standard of female beauty is Nordic -- narrow faces, fine features, white skin, blue eyes and blonde hair. Even some Japanese ladies blond their hair. To black males, a white wife is a trophy. Mrs Obama has no Nordic attributes at all. If her skin were white she would be ugly. She has received acceptance for political reasons only

We may deplore the Nordic standard but saying that people should adopt other standards for females that they like to look at is pissing into the wind. It won't happen. It will have zero influence. Brown hair can be accepted in lieu of blonde but that is the only variation to the top standard.

I too will be glad to see Melania in the White House

TWO American women — a mayor and local business leader — are under pressure to resign over a racist post about First Lady Michelle Obama that has sparked a social media row.

Clay County Development Corp director Pamela Ramsey Taylor made the post following Donald Trump’s election as president, saying: “It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady in the White House. I’m tired of seeing a Ape in heels.”

Clay Mayor Beverly Whaling responded: “Just made my day Pam.” The post, first reported by WSAZ-TV, was shared hundreds of times on social media before it was deleted.

The Facebook pages of Taylor and Whaling couldn’t be found Monday. A call to the Clay County Development Corp. went unanswered and Whaling didn’t immediately return a telephone message.

An online petition has been launched, calling for Whaling and Taylor to be fired.

The petition titled ‘Terminate Clay County Mayor and County Development Corp Director For Calling Michelle Obama an “Ape in Heels”’, has had more than 33,000 online supporters so far.

The non-profit development group provides services to elderly and low-income residents in Clay County. It is funded through state and federal grants and local fees.

Australia's ABC does often have a token conservative on its TV shows, hoping mainly to humiliate them. But usually, the conservative does get to say something. This time the conservative had barely opened his mouth before a Leftist interrupted him to contradict him. And the show host sided with the Leftist

A petition calling for The Project to apologise to Steve Price after he was 'bullied' by Carrie Bickmore live on-air has received 17,000 signatures.

The Change.org petition says the 61-year-old radio presenter was a victim of "leftist bullying" after a heated with columnist Jamila Rizvi last week which ended with Bickmore telling Price to watch his tone.

Price, a 2GB presenter and regular guest on The Project, was commenting on Donald Trump's election victory on Wednesday night when Rizvi, a vocal Hillary Clinton supporter, cut him off.

"The people in real America, in small town America, weren't buying the bulldust that was coming out of the elites," Price said.

"This is the reason why Donald Trump won, because people like you lecture and hector people."

Bickmore jumped to Rizvi's defence and warned Price to not "keep that tone" as the guests bickered between themselves. But it appears a large number of people think Rizvi was in the wrong.

The petition started three days ago calls for The Project to apologise to Price, describing the incident as "leftist bullying".

"Nobody, no matter what side of politics they fall on, should have to experience the abuse and degradation of what Steve had to go through on that program," petition founder Thomas Nicholls wrote. "What happened on The Project is unacceptable and should be condemned. Whether you are on the left, right, or somewhere in between, nobody should experience what Steve experienced."

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Strange results for a racist and sexist candidate

The net is awash with Lefist claims that Trump ran a racist and sexist campaign. But Americans as a whole clearly did not see it that way. It's just another of the habitual distortions of reality that Leftists constantly practice

[Trump] managed to win over many women and Latinos. White women, for example, voted for Trump over Clinton by a ten-point margin, according to CNN’s exit polling. Depending on which exit poll you believe, Trump may also have won anywhere from 19 percent to an astonishing 29 percent of the Latino vote, despite his anti-Latino rhetoric. Clinton’s supposed bulwark among college-educated voters also failed: White college graduates backed Trump by a 4-point margin, including 45 percent of college-educated white women.

It shouldn’t surprise us that women voted for Trump as strongly as they did: White women also voted for Romney and McCain by similar margins. But Clinton also underperformed Obama’s 2012 showing among Latino women by eight points. Clinton’s gender-based appeal not only backfired among men, but fell flat among many women. In 2016, the suburban, mostly white women Clinton tried hard to court seemingly made their decisions based on other factors.

And race? Per The New York Times’s exit poll, Trump outperformed Mitt Romney among all racial groups surveyed. Most shockingly, Trump gained fewer percentage points among whites than among other blocs of voters. Trump won only 1 percent more white voters than Romney, but bested him by 7 points among blacks, 8 points among Latinos, and 11 points among Asian Americans. These are not the numbers you would expect from a win driven primarily by white supremacist backlash.

Grubhub is a food delivery company that won't be delivering much food to Trump voters from now on

Grubhub CEO Matt Maloney is dumb, dumb and dumber. After the election he sent a condescending, baseless, whacko email that gives the impression to his employees that if you voted for Trump or believe in Trump's campaign message that you should send in your resignation. He even says that if Trumped worked there, many of his comments would have resulted in his immediate termination.

Would Maloney also want anyone who agrees with Trump to immediately stop buying their service?

On November 8, Grubhub was trading at $37.83 and now it's at $35.25. That is nearly a 7% drop while the rest of the market hit historic highs. His dumb political statements have so far cost Grubhub shareholders $200 million. What an idiot. The Grubhub board should hold an emergency session and fire him in order to reassure their shareholders that their company is in good hands and to send a message to customers that political intolerance is unacceptable.

Maloney has since produced a press release saying he is misunderstood. Baloney. He meant every word of what he said because he bought in like a child the nonsense narrative that Trump is a racist, homophobe, intolerant Nazi like figure.

Meanwhile, Trump supporters on Twitter are appropriately bashing Maloney relentlessly, but in a much smarter way than Maloney slammed them

Monday, November 14, 2016

While speaking to the Associated Press on Thursday, Oprah Winfrey admitted that she was in disbelief at Donald Trump's win and Hillary Clinton's shocking defeat on Tuesday.

But the media mogul was seemingly so impressed by the President-elect's meeting with President Obama that her feelings took a different turn, as she tweeted, "Everybody take a deep breath! Hope Lives!"

Winfrey went on to explain the reasoning behind her optimism: "I could sense, maybe I'm wrong, but I could sense from Donald Trump's body language even when he came out for the acceptance speech, that brotha has been humbled by this world thing."

Winfrey's comments have not been received well online, as several people, including Patton Oswalt (who tweeted "Oprah what the f---ck? This is not one of my favorite things") and W. Kamau Bell, have taken to Twitter to express their disappointment in Winfrey's new point of view. Many former Oprah followers responded to her comments as understood by several people as tone-deaf or condescending.

Progressives preach for equality and diversity, but do not tolerate diversity of thought. Many students on college campuses are not able to voice their opinions out of the fear of being racist, homophobic, or xenophobic. This intolerance has gotten so out of hand that people no longer ask questions and just assume the worst. Because if you come from a position of “privilege”, you have no life struggles. These elections are the perfect example of this.

A number of individuals are so dumbfounded by Trump’s victory, but they should not. These are the consequences of silencing individuals and not allowing them to speak their minds. They spoke with their votes. The left has created a hostile environment for debate and different opinions, it is hard to convince people to agree with you when you silence them because of their “privilege”.

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Police: Reported crime against woman in Muslim headscarf was a hoax

As usual

A young Muslim woman claimed she was attacked and robbed of her headscarf and wallet by two men, one of whom wore a Trump hat, but police are now saying it was a hoax. The attack supposedly took place in Louisiana where the woman is a student. Here’s how NBC News initially reported it:

The first police reports started trickling in within 10 hours of Donald Trump’s victory speech.

A Muslim student from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette reported being attacked by two men on Wednesday morning. The victim told investigators that one wore a white “TRUMP” hat while they hit her with a metal object and shouted obscenities as she fell to the ground. University police say the suspects fled with the woman’s wallet and hijab.

This story really checks all the boxes. It took place in the south. It appeared to involve obvious bigotry by the thieves. And, of course, there’s a connection to Trump. The ACLU of Louisiana quickly put out a statement condemning the attack:

The ACLU of Louisiana is outraged at the news of a young Muslim woman being assaulted and robbed of her hijab in Lafayette yesterday morning. The report that her attackers also shouted slurs and wore Donald Trump clothing is especially troubling in light of Mr. Trump’s frequent use of anti-Muslim rhetoric on the campaign trail.

Only it never happened as the AP reports:

A Louisiana college student has acknowledged she fabricated a report that she was assaulted and robbed of her wallet and Muslim headscarf by two men, one of whom she described as wearing a white “Trump” hat, police said Thursday.

The Lafayette Police Department said in a statement that it is no longer investigating the 18-year-old woman’s claims, which were made within hours of Donald Trump’s presidential victory.

I had just left victor davis hanson's website/blog after posting a comment to an article he had written, about "the non-elite elites," and how for all of their money and education and 1% status, they are dishonest and conniving w/ the truth. this was in relation to the just concluded election.

The post included a not so flattering example of the google ceo/owner's connivance with the clinton campaign on seeking advice on how he could advance it.

No sooner had i signed off of hanson's website did i receive a notice from google mail advising me to label hanson's site as "spam." god damn their little dictatorial asses trying to influence me on what i read, and trying their damnedest to curtail the reach of hanson's voice.

Friday, November 11, 2016

Democrat bigotry helped Trump

A touch of realism from the Left:

The Democrats are not the party of true unity. We claim to welcome a diverse range of people, but let’s face it: “diverse” has come to mean women and minorities. In our noble effort to give them a voice, we have devalued the voices of white people and men. And it’s not racist or intolerant of them to push back.

To be clear, the ideology of Donald Trump’s most radical (and visible) supporters is evil. But what about his quieter, possibly more moderate supporters, the silent majority that pollsters didn’t expect to vote for him? I can imagine how the Democrats’ message might appear unwelcoming to them.

During the early days of the campaign, American politician Madeleine Albright said it was feminists’ duty to vote for Hillary Clinton because she was a woman. That is to say that feminist voters should favor her because she’s female. And in preparing to celebrate Hillary Clinton’s historic victory, some of my Democrat friends told me they were sick of men in the White House.

And I get it. I really wanted a female president. I wanted her to inspire girls and shatter stereotypes about female leaders. But sexism in favor of women is still sexism, just as racism in favor of minorities is still racism. Whites and men are not wrong for voting against that.

Commentator made a probable guess in the absence of precise information

FORMER Australian Test [cricket] captain Ian Chappell has come under fire for a comment that has offended South African viewers watching the first Test at the WACA.

Chappell was commenting on play for Channel 9 when South African rising star Kagiso Rabada skittled the Australian middle order and snared a five-wicket haul in his side’s 177 run win.

Chappell was full of praise for the talented 21-year-old and joined fellow commentator Ian Healy in labelling the quick [bowler] a future superstar of the game. He said he was stunned by Rabada’s raw talent and pace at such a young age.

Unfortunately, Chappell didn’t leave it at that. When Healy asked him how Rabada could have developed such speed in his bowling, Chappell replied: “You’d have to ask all the batsman in his village”.

In reality, Rabada grew up in Johannesburg where he attended the prestigious St Stithians Boys College. His father is a neurosurgeon.

The comment did not go unnoticed on social media with Chappell’s comments labelled racist.

Among those to take exception was respected South African radio commentator Neil Manthorp who tweeted: ‘So Jo'burg doesn't qualify as a village? Staggering, isn't it? Surprised they didn't ask who was looking after his herd while he's here.”

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Australian TV host caught saying Trump was 'staring at wife Melania's t**s' and his supporters 'need an IQ test' when she thought she was off-air

If she was right I am pleased that Trump still likes staring at his wife's tits. They're undoubtedly good tits but he has seen them before

Television presenter Virginia Trioli has been caught live on air saying Donald Trump supporters should be forced to take an 'IQ test' and claiming he was staring at his wife's 't**s' as he went to vote.

The ABC Breakfast host was covering the US election at 10am on Wednesday and assumed the feed had crossed to an advertisement when she had an 'honest' chat with her team, according to The New Daily.

Pictures of presidential candidate Donald Trump staring at his wife's ballot paper as she cast her vote in Manhattan went viral on Wednesday, but Trioli accidentally told viewers he was more likely 'looking at Melania's t**s'.

The ABC's Media Manager, Sally Jackson, said they would not be commenting on the gaffe as 'there was nothing to add to what's been said at this point'.

Other viewers agreed with her comments, saying it was the journalist's 'best work'.

For years, supporters of the the name of the Washington football team have provided the one sanctuary where it was socially acceptable to shout a dictionary defined racial slur from the top of your lungs. Donald Trump—in his relentless war against human decency—has changed that reality dramatically in the last year. Bully anyone at anytime, and if someone asks you to stop, then you are just being—altogether now—politically correct (although that passionate defense of saying what you like doesn’t seem to apply to Trump’s critics or victims).

That’s why it shouldn’t be surprising to hear Trump’s closing argument in this election includes an entire commercial devoted to supporting the word “Redskins.” The 30-second ad—which is also insulting to the thinking ability of non-native football fans—begins with four white guys, chugging brews and sitting down to watch the game, although no beer bellies on these fellas. They look like Abercrombie & Fitch models with spray-on stubble.

Then a low, rumbling voice: “Yeah, you thought you were safe, sitting in your recliner in your man cave, cold beer and a bowl of chips. Ha, you thought you’d escaped politics by focusing on football. Wrong. Hillary Clinton wants to mess up your football, too. Hillary wants to change the name of the Redskins.”

Wednesday, November 09, 2016

The facts show that all the Leftist abuse of Trump and his supporters is exactly the opposite of the truth -- Lying Hillary and friends at work again in their usual way

A large Pew survey shows that Donald Trump’s supporters are more tolerant, open-minded, respectful and understanding than are Hillary Clinton’s vibrantly diverse supporters in her coalition of ethnic, sexual, professional and progressive factions.

“Clinton backers – particularly highly educated ones – have more difficulty respecting Trump supporters than the other way around,” Pew acknowledged in the Nov. 1 report.

That data is a mirror image of the media-magnified portrayal of Trump’s supporters that Democratic partisans have constructed throughout the 2016 campaign.

That image has been fostered by undercover Democratic groups which used extensive funding to arrange camera-ready fights at Trump’s rallies, by Clinton’s scripted eagerness to portray Trump’s supporters as irredeemable or insanely hostile to gays, migrant foreigners and Islamic believers, and by the media’s eagerness to showcase conflict at Trump rallies.

But Pew’s data shows that:

"nearly six-in-ten registered voters who back Clinton (58%) say they have a “hard time” respecting someone who supports Trump for president; 40% say they have “no trouble” with it. Nearly the opposite is true among Trump supporters, with 56% saying they have no trouble respecting someone who backs Clinton and 40% saying they do have trouble with it."

That’s a 17-point tolerance difference between the two parties.Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a campaign rally at the Bank of Colorado Arena on the campus of University of Northern Colorado October 30, 2016 in Greeley, Colorado.

Only the humorless Left could fail to see that this was not a serious proposal

During a report at a Monday school board meeting, Lake Oswego School District Superintendent Heather Beck publicly announced there recently was an “anti-Semitic” picture posted in the LOHS cafeteria and a “racist” comment on a Facebook page run by LOHS students. Beck said the district will respond with professional training and discussions with students.

The incident was announced to parents by LOHS Principal Rollin Dickinson. In a letter to parents Monday, Dickinson said he became aware of a “deeply disturbing” post on Nov. 2 on the Class of 2017 Facebook page, “a private account managed by students.” Dickinson said that three weeks ago, a poll of potential senior pranks was created, and those ideas included: "We create a club called Ku-Klux-Klub and find every black kid and sacrifice them." He said no one “Liked” the post, but no one objected to it until one student finally came forward and told a teacher, who told him.

“We were able to determine that the student who wrote the posts was not a current LOHS student but a former LOHS student who now attends an out-of-district high school,” Dickinson’s letter said. “One of our students volunteered to take the poll down.”

School Board Chair Sarah Howell said the people who report such incidents should be commended for their courage.

“It’s disappointing when people stand by and do nothing in these situations, so I’m very grateful (to) whoever brought this to your attention,” Howell said.

Tuesday, November 08, 2016

Troublesome pronouns in Canada

Premier Kathleen Wynne thinks we should replace words such as “mother” and “father” with gender-neutral (neutered?) terms such as “birth parent.” The federal Liberals, meanwhile, with Bill C-16, want to add gender identity and gender expression to the list of “prohibited grounds of discrimination.”

You can debate whether any of these measures are warranted, but there’s no question they are antithetical to free speech.

Just ask University of Toronto psychology Prof. Jordan Peterson. He was warned by university administrators to stop speaking publicly about his insistence on using gender-specific terms – “he” and “she,” in particular. “I don’t recognize a person’s right to determine what pronoun I use to address them,” he said in a YouTube posting. Peterson argues that Bill C-16, if passed, will make it a criminal offence to fail to use a person’s preferred pronoun regardless of whether that preference makes any rational sense.

Watters asked passersby in Chinatown questions like whether it was the "year of the dragon" or if they knew how to do karate. He also asked a young man if he could give him Chinese herbs from his parents' store that would help with "performance." Watters then called Asian-Americans "gentle" and "patient". Oh, the pain!

Fox host Bill O'Reilly is standing by a tone-deaf segment that aired on his show last week and mocked Asian-Americans, saying in a radio interview Tuesday that "The O'Reilly Factor" is not a "politically correct" show.

O'Reilly told "The Bernie and Sid Show" that he feels the backlash to the controversial "Watters World" segment, in which contributor Jesse Watters interviewed and mocked Asian-Americans on the streets of New York City's Chinatown, was a coordinated attack by liberal media outlets. Originally, he said, there had been few complaints.

"All of sudden, 36 hours later, we get this barrage," he said. "And the wording was almost exactly the same from all these left-wing websites, almost exactly the same. So we know it was a coordinated attack."

O'Reilly said Watters had done what he described as a similar segment in Little Italy the week prior, and that Watters would not be fired for the Chinatown piece just because people live in a "perpetual state of grievance." He did note that he would have edited the package differently, but said it was "gentle fun."

“He’s not getting fired," O'Reilly said. "We are a program that is not politically correct.”

Monday, November 07, 2016

An incorrect sailing ship?

The appearance of a Chilean naval vessel in Sydney Harbour, which had been used as a “torture chamber” by the Pinochet regime, has sparked protests from Chilean-Australians who say it should be removed from service.

The Esmeralda, a four-masted tall ship that is nearly 400ft long, is in Sydney as part of its 61st training cruise and has been docked at Garden Island since Thursday morning.

Considered a national symbol of Chile, it is used as a sail training vessel by the country’s navy and spends about half the year sailing around the world.

But its tours have sparked controversy after a series of human rights reports revealed that the ship was used to detain victims of the Augusto Pinochet’s regime in September 1973.

A 1986 US Senate report suggesting that as many as 112 people – including 40 women – were held on the ship, with rape, electric shocks, mock executions and beatings among the crimes reportedly carried out on board.

The Chile Solidarity Committee, a Sydney-based organisation of about 50 people, intends to protest against the vessel’s appearance on Saturday.

“Regardless of what the present purpose of the ship is, crimes were committed there,” he said. “People got killed there".

That Pinochet was just giving Communists some of their own back is not mentioned. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. Allende had just burnt the electoral rolls so it wasn't hard to see what was coming. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Nothing could be a more powerful example of the need to reform Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act than the commission's extraordinary overreaction to a cartoon by Bill Leak.

The fact the Human Rights Commission is so intent on pursuing a cartoonist for The Australian can only underscore how ludicrous the use of this law has become.

It is now too easily distorted into a symbol of intolerance rather than tolerance, of quelling dissent or differences of opinion with a particular view of the world, of punishing and vilifying those who question claims of victimhood.

The skill of cartoonists, the best cartoonists, lies in provoking their audience with their work. They mean to disturb comfortable assumptions, to reveal hypocrisy, to cause people to think again with a few clever lines of drawings and words.

In this case, a cartoon showing an Aboriginal police officer and a beer-carrying Aboriginal father who couldn't remember his kid's name may have been deeply offensive, especially to the many caring Aboriginal parents. But it also cut to the heart of a highly sensitive issue in Australian society agitated about the high incarceration rates as well as the at times shocking treatment of Aboriginal kids.

Just why are so many Aboriginal kids caught up in the juvenile justice system? Why are so many roaming the streets? There are obviously many complex reasons for this societal failure, including a history of racism in Australia.

But certainly one reason is because of the high levels of alcoholism and abuse leading to major parental neglect in so many Aboriginal communities. Simply ignoring this on the grounds that to dwell on this ugly truth is somehow racist doesn't make the problem go away.

Yet it was Leak's cartoon - rather than the painful reality of community dysfunction – that instantly created outrage. Apparently nowhere more so than at the Human Rights Commission. After a complaint from members of the public, encouraged by one of the commissioners, Triggs wants Leak to produce evidence he was not being racist in his cartoon.

That's because the current version of 18C makes illegal behaviour that is "reasonably likely, in all circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate" due to race, colour, national or ethnic origin on the other person.

Sunday, November 06, 2016

‘X Factor’ novelty rapper Honey G has once again come under fire for cultural appropriation, this time from grime artist Kano and singer Lily Allen.

The two were being interviewed by Annie Mac for ‘The Exchange’, when the controversial act came up in the conversation.

Lily was the first to voice her opinion, telling the presenter: “As far as I can tell she is a white lady that dresses up in Ali G, Goldie Lookin Chain kind of attire,

“She has done really well on ‘X Factor’ and ITV is pouring money into her. I’m not black but I find it offensive.”

Kano then added that he found Honey G to be a “joke”, calling her prominence on ‘X Factor’ “so wrong on so many levels”.

Honey G has previously been forced to speak out in the past over the suggestion that her performances are culturally appropriative or racially insensitive, insisting the racism accusations were “ridiculous”.

She took things a step further shortly after this, when she suggested that she was having the “race card” used against her and even being “discriminated against” because she was white.

Speaking on the issue, Honey G said: “It makes me question whether they have a problem with someone rapping who is white.

“I’m not the only white person in the world who likes black music. There’s no evidence, proof or truth that I am a racist.”

In a Deepavali-related video by TheSmartLocal, titled “Singaporeans Try: Indian snacks”, its staff were shown making faces while trying “snacks that many of our Indian friends know and love”.

Singaporean poet Marc Nair, who was recently conferred the Young Artist Award, called the video “racist, reductive and revolting” on his Facebook page. “Please don’t foist your ignorance and squeamish responses on the rest of us,” he wrote. Playwright Joel Bertrand Tan lambasted the site for its close-mindedness, calling it “horrible”.

Some Indian snacks are rather strange to non-Indians. I personally enjoy them all. But everyone has their own tastes so why not say what they like? Overall, Indian food is a great success worldwide so Indians can be proud of their cuisine while accepting that not everyone will like all of it.

Friday, November 04, 2016

Can you be racist about DEATH? Reveller was banned from a student Halloween party because his 'Grim Reaper' black face paint might have caused racial offence

A reveller who painted his face black as part of a 'Grim Reaper' fancy dress outfit says he was left humiliated after being barred from a university party in case he caused racial offence.

Ryan Lytwyn, 22, wore a creepy cloak and smeared his face black to emphasise his ghoulish white and red eyes.

But when he reached the door of the Edinburgh University Student Union Halloween event he was immediately turned away.

He fell foul of strict Union rules on fancy dress, which include a ban on dressing up as Mexicans, gangsters, mental health patients and 'camp men'.

Ryan, who graduated with a degree in politics from the university earlier this year, said: 'Everyone thinks it's ridiculous. I felt like I was accused of blacking up which in itself is offensive to me. It's also quite bizarre to compare the Grim Reaper to that as well.

'I asked them if my makeup had caused offence and the manager answered no, but that some might find it offensive.

'I asked them if anyone had complained and they said no one had complained but that they might complain.

'They told me I had to leave unless I removed the makeup. To be singled out in the queue was embarrassing.'

Last month, YouTube was accused of censorship after it emerged it has been removing the ability for users to make money from their videos if they express politically incorrect or offensive views.

And the latest video to fall victim to the site's new censorship rules is, ironically, one on left wing censorship.

The video, titled 'The Dark Art of Political Intimidation', was placed in 'restricted mode', making it inaccessible to schools, libraries and those with a YouTube filter.

The PragerU series is the brain child of radio host, Dennis Prager, who wanted to give students an alternative take on history.

According to its website, PragerU's mission is 'to explain and spread what we call "Americanism" through the power of the Internet.'

On YouTube, PragerU has five-minute videos that 'clarify profoundly significant and uniquely American concepts for more than 100 million people each year.

'These values are Judeo-Christian at their core and include the concepts of freedom of speech, a free press, free markets and a strong military to protect and project those values.'

The video was posted last week by Kimberly Strassel, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, as part of the PragerU series, and explained why 'intimidation, harassment, and blackmail have become the norm in American politics'.

The Wall Street Journal wrote in a post: 'Within several hours of PragerU posting the video, YouTube placed it in "restricted mode", making it inaccessible to schools, libraries and young Americans whose parents have enabled YouTube technology filters.'

A spokesperson for YouTube told the Wall Street Journal that 'video restrictions are decided by an "algorithm" that factors in "community flagging" and "sensitive content'".

This suggests that the algorithm was activated by people flagging the video, and in the process doing exactly what the video accuses people of doing.

Thursday, November 03, 2016

Olympic star Louis Smith banned by British Gymnastics over leaked video of him mocking Islam

But you can mock Christianity all you like, of course

Olympic silver medallist Louis Smith has been suspended for two months by British Gymnastics over a controversial video leaked online that showed him mocking Islam.

Footage, filmed by Smith but leaked to the media, showed him and fellow gymnast Luke Carson laughing whilst pretending to pray and shouting 'Allahu Akbar'. He has said that he has since received death threats.

British Gymnastics said it would investigate the incident and an independent panel has now found the 27-year-old from Peterborough guilty of a breach of the organisation's Standards of Conduct. Carson was given a reprimand.

Smith, who has won four Olympic medals, including silver in the pommel horse at the 2016 Rio Games, last month posted a message on his official Twitter feed in which he apologised for the incident.

A comment from Australia. 18C is an Australian law against "hate speech"

FOR the first time ever, Halloween tonight will be genuinely scary. Not because of the costumes the kids will be wearing, but because of the costumes that they won’t be wearing.

The University of Florida, a bastion of sanctimonious political correctness worthy of our own quasi-Marxist tertiary institutions, posted on its website a fortnight ago:

“If you choose to participate in Halloween activities, we encourage you to think about your choices of costumes and themes. Some Halloween costumes reinforce stereotypes of particular races, genders, cultures, or religions. Regardless of intent, these costumes can perpetuate negative stereotypes, causing harm and offence to groups of people. Also, keep in mind that social media posts can have a long-term impact on your personal and professional reputation.”

Halloween is traditionally a time for terrifying kids, but this sinister censorship threat takes creepiness to a new level. In fact, it points to a totalitarian future that is scarier than the worst Halloween nightmare.

In the first sentence, “choose to participate” and “think about your choices” are weasel words that actually mean “we have made the decision for you”. This is made clear in the disgusting, unambiguous threat in the final sentence, which is tantamount to an Orwellian promise to keep tabs on you via social media and punish you and your entire career should you deviate from the politically “correct” path.

Wearing a Donald Trump mask might land you in hot water with feminists if there’s any mock groping involved.But the truly repellent part of this Big Brother directive comes in the claim that costumes can be “offensive” to cultural identity groups, be they “races, genders, cultures or religions”. Sound familiar? This is the old 18C trick.

Here’s how it works.

I’d like to go along to the students’ Halloween fancy dress party as Frank N. Furter, the pansexual, cross-dressing mad scientist from The Rocky Horror Show. That’d be cool! Except it isn’t.

Perhaps, instead, I’ll go along dressed as a Mad Mullah. Topical costumes are always fun. It’s Halloween after all, and what’s scarier than a bloke with a long black beard in a white robe wandering into your party clutching a copy of the Koran? (It’s actually just an old Bible but I crossed that out and wrote “Koran” on it instead.) Plus, it’s a pretty cheap costume and even better, my girlfriend decides to accompany me dressed in a giant black bin-liner with a slit cut out for her eyes. What a hoot.

Oops. Stupidly we allow ourselves to be photographed getting drunk, someone sticks it on Instagram, and there goes not only the rest of our education but our careers as well, because we have “offended” Muslims. This we did, they tell us, (a) by mocking their “cultural” clothing and religion and (b) by getting pissed while doing so.

OK, I need to be more imaginative. We’ve just been studying 12 Years A Slave in our cultural-political-media course, so why not go as my hero, Solomon Northup, in that scene where he survives getting lynched? That’s classic Halloween stuff! All I need is a rope around my neck, a bloody torn shirt, bare feet and to paint my face black …

Oh damn. There goes my career again.

Then how about I go as Donald Trump and my girlfriend goes as Miss Universe. Then, as we walk together into the party, I turn and grope her! That’d be funny. We’d be bound to win!

Unfortunately, the feminists report me and my girlfriend to the university.

The truly repellent part of the University of Florida’s Big Brother directive to “think about your (costume) choices” comes in the claim that they can be “offensive” to cultural groups.You may think I’m joking, but this same self-censorship will be going through the minds of many Australians this year for the same insidious reason: political correctness gone creepy.

Remember, it was only recently that our own basketball star Alice Kunek was hounded by Australian Race Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane for wearing “blackface”. Her crime? Posting on Instagram a photo of herself going to a fancy dress party as her favourite singer, Kanye West.

Unless such intolerant commissioners are removed and the insidious 18C repealed, our kids can look forward to a very bleak future.

Wednesday, November 02, 2016

Cultural appropriation nonsense at Halloween (2)

Hilary Duff is apologising for her and her boyfriend’s costumes of a pilgrim and Native American, respectively, which she now understands “offended” many people. After photos emerged of Duff as a scantily-clad pilgrim and her new man wearing a Native American headdress and face paint, social media exploded with comments condemning the couple for their insensitivity and offensive cultural appropriation. Duff says she truly “sorry” from the bottom of her heart.

On Friday, the actress and Jason Walsh attended a Casamigos tequila-sponsored Halloween party in Beverly Hills, and by Saturday she and her new boyfriend trainer were getting slammed on Twitter. In addition to being called “racist,” many people noted that wearing a traditional Native American headdress is “not a costume,” and that the couple’s outfits showed how “ignorant” they are.

On Sunday, the former Disney star realised the errors of her ways and apologised. Duff wrote on Twitter, “I am SO sorry to people I offended with my costume. It was not properly thought through and I am truly, from the bottom of my [heart emoji] sorry.”

Telling a Texan not to wear cowboy boots is like telling Colonel Sanders not to fry chicken.

Fraternities and Sororities were instructed to avoid Halloween party costumes and themes that might “appropriate another culture or experience,” according to The College Fix.

Students were issued a 29-point checklist to ensure they avoid any controversial or offensive trick or treat regalia.

Here’s a brief list of the costumes and themes considered harmful by the University of Texas:

Cowboys and Indians — anything “Squaw” or any generalized depiction of an indigenous person or peoples;

“South of the Border” and “Fiesta” themes;

“Ghetto Fabulous” or “Urban” themes;

“Pimps and Hoes” theme;

“Trailer Trash” theme;

“Chicks and Hicks” “Rednecks.”

In other words, no tacos, tee-pees or Daisy Dukes at UT-Austin Halloween parties.

The university also urged party-goers to avoid sensationalizing transgender celebrities such as the “Jenner formerly known as Bruce.”

Schools across the fruited plain have been warning students that Halloween is less about trick-or-treating and more about not triggering micro-aggressions among overly sensitive and easily offended millennials.

The University of Florida is offering counseling for any student offended by a Wonder Woman or Zombie or Papa Smurf costume.

“Some Halloween costumes reinforce stereotypes of particular races, genders, cultures, or religions,” school administrators wrote in a blog post. “Regardless of intent, these costumes can perpetuate negative stereotypes, causing harm and offense to groups of people.”

However, the University of Texas does believe there are some costumes considered appropriate for the academic community.

They suggested kids could dress as superheroes or an athlete or perhaps a letter of the alphabet.

Although, students might want to steer clear of the letters “L”, “G”, “B”, “T” and “Q.”

Is the American national anthem politically incorrect? From the 4th verse:Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."

Mohammad

The truth can be offensive to some but it must be said

"HATE SPEECH" is free speech: The U.S. Supreme Court stated the general rule regarding protected speech in Texas v. Johnson (109 S.Ct. at 2544), when it held: "The government may not prohibit the verbal or nonverbal expression of an idea merely because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable." Federal courts have consistently followed this. Said Virginia federal district judge Claude Hilton: "The First Amendment does not recognize exceptions for bigotry, racism, and religious intolerance or ideas or matters some may deem trivial, vulgar or profane."

Even some advocacy of violence is protected by the 1st Amendment. In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the U.S. Supreme Court held unanimously that speech advocating violent illegal actions to bring about social change is protected by the First Amendment "except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

The double standard: Atheists can put up signs and billboards saying that Christianity is wrong and that is hunky dory. But if a Christian says that homosexuality is wrong, that is attacked as "hate speech"

One for the militant atheists to consider: "...it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg" -- Thomas Jefferson

"I think no subject should be off-limits, and I regard the laws in many Continental countries criminalizing Holocaust denial as philosophically repugnant and practically useless – in that they confirm to Jew-haters that the Jews control everything (otherwise why aren’t we allowed to talk about it?)" -- Mark Steyn

Voltaire's most famous saying was actually a summary of Voltaire's thinking by one of his biographers rather than something Voltaire said himself. Nonetheless it is a wholly admirable sentiment: "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it". I am of a similar mind.

The traditional advice about derogatory speech: "Sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you". Apparently people today are not as emotionally robust as their ancestors were.

Why conservatives should not respond to Leftist abuse: "Never wrestle with a pig, because you'll both just get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

The KKK were members of the DEMOCRATIC party. Google "Klanbake" if you doubt it

A phobia is an irrational fear, so the terms "Islamophobic" and "homophobic" embody a claim that the people so described are mentally ill. There is no evidence for either claim. Both terms are simply abuse masquerading as diagnoses and suggest that the person using them is engaged in propaganda rather than in any form of rational or objective discourse.

Leftists often pretend that any mention of race is "racist" -- unless they mention it, of course. But leaving such irrational propaganda aside, which statements really are racist? Can statements of fact about race be "racist"? Such statements are simply either true or false. The most sweeping possible definition of racism is that a racist statement is a statement that includes a negative value judgment of some race. Absent that, a statement is not racist, for all that Leftists might howl that it is. Facts cannot be racist so nor is the simple statement of them racist. Here is a statement that cannot therefore be racist by itself, though it could be false: "Blacks are on average much less intelligent than whites". If it is false and someone utters it, he could simply be mistaken or misinformed.

Categorization is a basic human survival skill so racism as the Left define it (i.e. any awareness of race) is in fact neither right nor wrong. It is simply human

Whatever your definition of racism, however, a statement that simply mentions race is not thereby racist -- though one would think otherwise from American Presidential election campaigns. Is a statement that mentions dogs, "doggist" or a statement that mentions cats, "cattist"?

If any mention of racial differences is racist then all Leftists are racist too -- as "affirmative action" is an explicit reference to racial differences

Was Abraham Lincoln a racist? "You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this be admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated. It is better for both, therefore, to be separated." -- Spoken at the White House to a group of black community leaders, August 14th, 1862

Gimlet-eyed Leftist haters sometimes pounce on the word "white" as racist. Will the time come when we have to refer to the White House as the "Full spectrum of light" House?

The spirit of liberty is "the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." and "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it." -- Judge Learned Hand

Mostly, a gaffe is just truth slipping out

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

It seems a pity that the wisdom of the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus is now little known. Remember, wrote the Stoic thinker, "that foul words or blows in themselves are no outrage, but your judgment that they are so. So when any one makes you angry, know that it is your own thought that has angered you. Wherefore make it your endeavour not to let your impressions carry you away."

"Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason?" -- English poet John Milton (1608-1674) in Areopagitica

Leftists can try to get you fired from your job over something that you said and that's not an attack on free speech. But if you just criticize something that they say, then that IS an attack on free speech

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) could have been speaking of much that goes on today when he said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

I despair of the ADL. Jews have enough problems already and yet in the ADL one has a prominent Jewish organization that does its best to make itself offensive to Christians. Their Leftism is more important to them than the welfare of Jewry -- which is the exact opposite of what they ostensibly stand for! Jewish cleverness seems to vanish when politics are involved. Fortunately, Christians are true to their saviour and have loving hearts. Jewish dissatisfaction with the myopia of the ADL is outlined here. Note that Foxy was too grand to reply to it.

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here